Alamosa group rallies at Tipton’s office

A group of about 20 gathered in the crisp, cold morning of Feb. 24 in Alamosa holding signs and chanting slogans for health care for all. While they stood in front of District 3 Representative Scott Tipton’s office, Tipton was thousands of miles away.

Event organizer Chuck Tidd invited Tipton to meet with a few of his San Luis Valley constituents, but Tipton did not reply to the invitation or attend. Tidd learned while reading a Feb. 20 Denver Post article that Tipton was in Germany at the time.

To cheers, Lyn Gullette, campaign coordinator for Colorado Foundation for Universal Health Care, spoke about moving forward from last year’s defeated Amendment 69 toward quality affordable health care for everyone for life. Gullette noted many other states fighting for health care for everyone, including several with legislative efforts this year: California, New Mexico, Maine, Vermont, and New York.

“Coloradans want universal health care,” said Barbara Tidd, event co-organizer. “While insurance companies and others who profit from our current broken health care system spent big money to defeat Amendment 69, awareness is growing that everyone deserves and can have quality health care they can afford. We can do this with a single payment system like Medicare-for-all.”

Participants prepared written questions for Tipton about the repeal of the ACA, health care, Medicare, and Social Security and submitted them to Tipton’s office as part of the event. Our Revolution, the grassroots organization started by VT Sen. Bernie Sanders, helped promote it.

Matthew Martinez, veterans’ coordinator at Adams State University, also spoke about how the Affordable Care Act has helped veterans gain quicker and better access to health care, although access to care is still slow. Repeal of the ACA would hurt veterans with a return to longer wait times and the quality of care would go down, Martinez said.